MediEvil 1 and a Half: The Untold Story
by Shannon175
Summary: The century is 1400. Time has begun to move differently since Daniel Fortesque defeated the sorcerer Zarok, and now decades move like months. Zarok's spells have re-emerged, as they're wont to do when Englishmen are about, and the once glorious land of Gallowmere has begun to sink beneath the ocean. Now Dan's had to trade arm-wrestling with Megwynne Stormbinder with a war... again.
1. Prologue

_Prologue _

"No. Not that spell."

Zarok glared at the mess of papers in front of him. This was going to be a long night. In fact actually, it already was a long night: that bony little upstart had turned up at his domain and, despite somehow missing a jaw and looking a great deal more lopsided than usual, had just wiped out his defensemen plus Lord Kardok and was currently standing around in _his _battleground like he bloody owned the place. This was nothing new, of course. He always was a small man in big boots in King Peregrin's day, and clearly losing half of his facial... face didn't make him any less of such. But at least he'd gotten to watch Fortesque throw the mother of all hissyfits in front of the clown tiles in the Asylum Grounds. That almost made up for everything.

_Poof! _"Ooh!" he said suddenly. "Oh, not right now," he decided reluctantly, stashing the page in a book of urban legends for future reference. He fiddled around some more into he finally exclaimed in triumph, "Aha! Now I have it!"

A flash and a portcullis opening later, Zarok crawled out onto the field on all fours and loomed over his foe with glee.

"None shall defeat the mighty Zarok!" An anomaly occurred briefly that would have turned the sorcerer's face red with embarrassment if it were not in fact that colour already and he cleared his throat firmly. "So prepare to die, Fortesque!"

_Well, _he thought with satisfaction, _at least he has the good grace to run away this time._

Fortesque backed off towards the wall, keenly pursued by Zarok. The little bag of armour turned once the wall had blocked his path and faced his opponent. He was now wielding a weapon.

_Bugger. _It was a magic sword.

Generally things went downhill for Zarok after that. But at least his special spell was safe between the covers of his seldom read but often stepped on book of urban legends. He could come back for that later... amongst other things, of course.

And the traditional hundred years after that, two heirs to a kingdom called "England" were about to read a story...


	2. Chapter 1

_Chapter One_

Lute music drifted across the hall in a pleasant wave as always, and the drinks were passed around in abundance. Despite being unable to eat anything and having a tendency to slop his drink a bit more than everyone else, Dan was having a great time.

In accordance with tourist description details, there was a great deal of arm wrestling going on around the dining table. He being the only resident of a flesh-less disposition, Dan was avoided regularly on these occasions... apart from this occasion, apparently.

"Fortesque!" Ironhewer bellowed. "Let's see you have a go, shall we?"

"Huh?"

"Come now! You can beat old Woden here, can't you?"

Dan gave Woden an uneasy glance and gulped - well, insofar as he could with nothing to swallow with. "Oh no."

"Leave him to his drink, Ironhewer," intoned Woden in his booming voice. "There's no point wasting my time with this bag of chicken bones, even if there's a distinct abundance in time these days."

Dan growled and rolled up his sleeves. _Chicken bones? _

Stanyer gave a triumphant laugh. "I knew you'd give it a try!"

"I don't think so!"

They turned to face Megwynne giving them a stern glance.

"Oh, you up for a challenge, eh?"

"No!" she said, appalled. "His poor arm's in a state as it is, look at it! It looks as though it's been pulled off and stuck back on a dozen times!"

"Well, it has," Dan mumbled sheepishly. It had served as a handy weapon on occasion.

"You don't want to be known as a chicken, do you?" Ironhewer teased jovially.

Megwynne hesitated. "Well..."

"Well, well, Megwynne Stormbinder, a chicken," Stanyer mocked.

"Oh, all right," she relented, sitting next to Dan. "I'll go easy on you," she murmured to him.

His arm cracked off in less than ten seconds regardless.

"Sorry," Megwynne said in a small voice, handing the severed arm back to the sound of laughter. Dan eyeballed her with his single eye and rammed his arm back to its rightful home.

A new opponent was soon elected, and Dan returned to his musings as Canny Tim gawped in terror at the huge arm placed in front of him.

It had been... Well. Time was a bit of a mystery in the Hall, and Dan didn't really have a clue how long he had been here. Ten minutes after he had settled in, it was as though he had always been there. It was pleasant enough for him to call his perfect home. Except for the memories...

It was the memories of Castle Peregrin that got to him. Those had been the happiest days of his life, bar the one when he charged at Zarok's army and into the path of a very pointy arrow, which Dan quickly decided to forget. Yes, he had lied his way into King Peregrin's court with fanciful stories of dragons and so on, and yes, maybe he had overdone it with the croquet sessions, which he was no bloody good at anyway, but in the whole spectrum of the thing, he had enjoyed it. He had friends there, and yes, he had met Zarok there too, but it had been worth it.

The end hadn't been.

He'd returned from the dead and burned the place to the ground. It was that or leave the Shadow Demons destroy Gallowmere, but he had still literally flown off and left his home to burn beneath the lava under the palace. All those memories forgotten, all to rid the world of the monsters Dan himself had released accidentally.

He shook this off with a heavy heart and returned his attention to the gentle ambience of the Hall. Tim had wandered off holding his arm in agony, Megwynne hovering behind in concern. She seemed to be the mother hen of the Hall, clucking along after her honorary children - which seemed to just be Dan and Tim, the newcomers. As if they were going to get bullied to death - which Dan would have if he hasn't already been killed by a stray arrow.

Just as Dan was grimacing over that detail, his surroundings began to waver. He shook his head, since blinking was beyond him at this stage, and focussed on the Hall and its Heroes...

Who had all disappeared.

Dan rose quickly to his feet. The Hall of Heroes was deserted. Stanyer Ironhewer and Woden the Mighty were no longer at the table, Tim and Megwynne had vanished, Ravenhooves, Dirk Steadfast, Karl Sturngard, _everyone - _all gone.

Dan raised an arm to scratch his skull in bemusement, and he recoiled in horror. His hand was shimmering. He realised exactly what was happening: he was being forced from the Hall of Heroes.

He was being brought back to life.

Dan threw his hands onto the edge of the table. "No!" he shrieked. "I want to _stay! Let me STAY!" _

Life's fingers gripped his torso and tugged, gently but firmly. A smell wafted over his head, a familiar smell... the smell of sorcery.

The smell of Zarok.

He screamed more fervently now. "LET ME GO! NOOOOOO!"

The smell sucked him in and his fingertips slid from the table, scoring deep marks into its surface. Dan screamed as he was sent tumbling into an abyss, and the Hall of Heroes faded away into a twilit oblivion.


	3. Chapter 2

_Chapter Two_

Zarok jolted to attention in alarm. He'd just felt an unfamiliar yet recognisable _pang._

His spells.

They were active.

He checked himself and his surroundings feverishly, hoping against hope that his dreams had finally come true. Alas, they had not. He was still cold, ice still surrounded him, and the whiteness gave way to nothing. He was still alone: he was still dead.

So who was using his spells?

He stretched his back after a century spent crumpled in the ice and frowned into empty space, of which he had an abundance. How had he died again? Oh yes. He grimaced. His domain had fallen on top of him. Now he remembered.

But if it fell on him, it must have also fallen on his spell book - meaning he couldn't possibly have left any trace of his incantations behind him, or at least none that could be of any use. So who got his spells... and how?

Unless...

_That Godforsaken country... They wouldn't have, would they?_

Zarok grimaced further. They had stayed away all these years, bar the odd hapless knight wannabe, and they decide to poke around _now? _

_Just as well I'm dead then, _he thought in satisfaction.

Then it hit him like a crossbow bolt to the chest. He hasn't signed them! The spells he had spent lifetimes experimenting and perfecting were hanging around just waiting for someone to stick their name on the end!

_Bugger it thrice over!_

He had to act. He glared around at the icy realm that had been his home for the last one hundred years and began to ponder his escape. He could avert the shackles of death easily enough, but the shackles of Hell were going to be a tad more difficult.

He curled back into a ball against the icy winds and thought, _hard._ By the time he had found his solution, another pang hit him in his nerves, harder and more resounding than the last.

* * *

Green tendrils of pure energy coiled themselves around his body and _squeezed_ like a supernatural squid. Into his ribs went the sorcery, and out of his bones spilled Dan's memories.

Splintered fragments of pain and death marked his first passing from the world. Metal feet trampled him as he lay on the battlefield, one eye watching the sky and the other staring at his sharpened killer. Suddenly Dan was on his feet, running from the explosions of bricks and mortar, flying over the chaos beneath giant vulture wings too large to be natural. Then he was back home... well, back to where he woke up the first time, back to his crypt, to where he had laid back down and ascended to the Hall of Heroes...

And where he was writhing and jerking now and leaving the realm of the dead for a much crappier realm filled with uncertainty and self doubt and air and bad smells... the smell of sorcery, to be exact - necromancy, to be totally precise.

His body slammed onto the stone bed beneath him and his spine jarred. The light faded, leaving Dan in near darkness. That was alright, he thought to himself, sitting up slowly. He could fumble his way out in the dark. He'd left the front door open. What he needed was a sword.

Another flashback from shortly after Zarok's defeat surfaced. He'd leaned his hands on his bed, for want of a better term, and noticed a sizable broadsword leaning on the edge with a sigh. Typical. He had had to make do with a piddly toothpick sword for half the quest because he'd left his broadsword behind. _At least the adventure is over now, _ he had thought in relief, cursing his missing eye, all the same.

Now he grabbed the sword beside his bed and screamed. _Not the blade! _his mind screamed in unison. He clutched his notched finger bones in agony.

Once he had the sword grasped firmly by the hilt, he started to make his way to the exit, tapping the walls with the tip of his blade on the way. A gargoyle began to speak, only to cut himself off with a shriek upon contact with Dan's sword, and after bumping into a wall that redeemed itself by having a life bottle pressed against it, Dan finally reached the stairs and ascended carefully.

The open door was illuminated in an iridescent green glow. On closer inspection, green globs of slime were suspended inside the doorway, which ruined his night vision no end. He sighed heavily and strolled right through to the open air.

He needed no night vision to see what had happened to the Necropolis.

Two hills were all that remained of Gallowmere: one with his crypt atop it, the other with the mausoleum lurking across the way. Everywhere else in between and for miles around was water. Gallowmere had all but sunk below the surface of the ocean, like Atlantis, or on its way towards Atlantis, anyway.

Dan stared in disbelief at the waves slowly eroding the remains of the Necropolis. If his thoughts of destroying Peregrin's castle were damaging, it was nothing compared to this.

Gallowmere as he knew it was dead, buried beneath the waves.


	4. Chapter 3

_Chapter Three_

"Daniel?" There was no reply. "Where are you?"

Megwynne was worried. The Hall was bustling merrily with laughter and cart-wheeling now that the arm wrestling had finished, and Dan was nowhere to be seen. Usually he would be among the cart-wheelers showing off his skills, but not today.

She was worried about him. He'd been looking pensive lately, and had more often as not taken on a sombre, desolate look. She wondered if he was missing home - home from when he was alive, that is. She often had bouts of homesickness herself from time to time, though not so often these days, she had to admit. Once you were in the Hall of Heroes, it was home for eternity. Even the sorceries of the likes of Zarok couldn't tear them out, whether they were revival-prone like Dan or not.

Megwynne approached Canny Tim at a brisk jog, who was standing at the stairs aiming his signature crossbow at an apple atop the head of Karl Sturngard, he being less likely to be shot in the head due to his permanently fixed helmet. Tim followed her to the top of the stairs at her signal and they stood at the foot of the left staircase to talk.

"Have you seen Daniel? He must have wandered off while my back was turned, I can't see him anywhere."

"Haven't seen hide nor hair of him, ma'am," he said politely. He was always a polite boy, she thought fondly. Once you got him talking about crossbows he would chatter on in earnest for the best part of a week, but never without courtesy. "He could be upstairs," he suggested. "Most days I find him up there, lost in his own thoughts. Must be missing Gallowmere - the way it was in the old days, you know. I'd never seen the captain happier than when he was with the king or with us practising shots."

Megwynne nodded pensively. "I noticed he was quiet. Let's look upstairs, maybe he is just reflecting."

They continued upstairs and walked the perimeter of the Hall with no avail.

Tim scratched his head in confusion, peering down at the lower floor. "Where could he have got to?" he wondered aloud. "There's no where else he could go where he wouldn't be seen."

Megwynne scanned the lower level again thoroughly. "He can't have gone far. Let's ask around, he has to be around here somewhere."

The two scattered across the Hall, searching fruitlessly and asking around. The Heroes joined in and checked in every nook and cranny, under tables and stairs and in the anti chamber before gathering in bemusement.

"Where'd he go?" Dirk asked, puzzled. "It's as though he vanished into thin air!"

"You don't think someone high up has revoked his passage to the Hall of Heroes, do you?" Ravenhooves asked. "They have done it before."

"Ah, but tha' was cuz 'e hadn't killed Zarok like they said 'e had," Dirk pointed out. "He remedied that by comin' 'ere. They wouldn't pull 'im out for nuthin'."

"This smells of Zarok," growled Bloodmonath. "Let us escape and spill necromancer blood to the skies!" he exclaimed, throwing his arms wide.

"Nein!" snapped Karl. "We should stay and raise our defenses! If they can take him, they can take ANY OF US!"

"This is your shield crap again, isn't it?" Dirk demanded, rolling his eyes. "Danny needs our 'elp, we should grab ourselves some swords and jump after him! We'd make a fine army! They'd be singing of our victory for centuries!"

"I don't think we can follow him," Megwynne said slowly.

They swung around to face her. "Why not?" they asked in unison.

"When has anyone come to the Hall and returned to the land of the living afterwards? Don't you think if there was any chance of us being resurrected, it would have happened at the same time as Daniel? Someone wants him for something, something they don't want us for. And unless that person decides that we should follow, we won't be going anywhere."

They froze. She had a point.

"That's decided then," Tim said determinedly. "We will stay here and provide support for Captain Fortesque. He'll find some way to contact us, I'm sure of it!"

"Do we have supplies for him?" Ravenhooves asked. "He'll need weapons, money..."

Various supplies hideaways were checked.

"Nothing," Dirk replied. "Just this green gloop."

They looked at the green gloop in puzzlement. It looked useless from where they were standing, but Dan had taken it gladly on previous occasions and often asked for more.

"Keep it on standby again," Megwynne ordered. "Just in case."

* * *

Dan couldn't believe it. He just couldn't believe it.

His home was gone. Forever. Nothing but water and a few measly hills. Gone.

He scanned the horizon for signs of anything else and found what he thought were the old mountains of Peregrin's castle in the distance. That was a start. Maybe the flooding hadn't quite reached the east yet. He could only hope.

He waded in a bit to check just how deep the water was, only to lose his footing along the way and drown. The life bottle came in handy at that point. He gazed at the empty bottle now as he sat outside the crypt, feeling deflated and turning the empty glass left and right in his hand. Where could he refill it? There were some handy fountains in the graveyard bursting with the stuff, before the water came and washed it away, no doubt. There had been one on Cemetery Hill too, but he remembered sucking it dry after the climb the last time.

Which brought him to his next point: what year was it? How long ago had he defeated Zarok? Was it a decade ago? A century? A _millennium?_ It was impossible to know. He checked his eye socket for his wormy friend, but apparently he was gone. Dan almost thought he could sense its descendants making home in a more disconcerting crevice of his anatomy, but he didn't want to check out in the open, even if there was no one around to watch, so he left them there. He could safely assume that anyone he had met here on his last visit would not be here today.

He bolted upright suddenly, his eye bulging in realisation. The gargoyles! They would surely still be around, wouldn't they? In fact they were! He suddenly recalled the squeal of the gargoyle he had stabbed in the eye earlier.

He raced back to the crypt.

Moonlight had burst through the clouds during Dan's musings on his lost home and faint silver light from the window softly illuminated the crypt to a dull outline. There were two gargoyles at the other end of the crypt, he recalled, and he could soon hear grumblings coming from the left hand side of the sloping hallway.

"My eye... my poor eye... it stabbed me!" it exclaimed loudly as Dan approached. "It swans into the realm of the living like a supernatural tourist and it stabs me in the eye! Oh, everyone has forgotten the past mistakes of the great Sir Daniel Fortesque, Hero of Gallowmere, but lo and behold! It isn't in the Hall of Heroes now, is it? We wonder why!"

Dan recalled dryly that this was the same gargoyle who had scolded its companion after his first resurrection, and he wondered why he wasn't surprised.

"It has come to ask of Gallowmere, hasn't it?" sneered the gargoyle, its right eye fixed permanently shut. "It wonders why his home is water now, doesn't it? It thought it had redeemed itself, slaughtering the sorcerer Zarok with its fancy magic sword, but it wonders _why it still walks the ground of mortals?_"

"Get on with it," Dan said impatiently.

"Well, it shall know," the creature said, relishing the attention. "A hundred years have passed since the demise of the necromancer Zarok. The ground moves and shakes and slides over eons, consuming and rebuilding in an immortal cycle.

"After the work of Zarok, the earth saw fit to take Gallowmere, piece by piece – and the sea took it and washed over everything, scouring the realm of the Dark Lord's residue. But not before the people of another realm arrived, searching for lands to take and people to rule, only to find the most treasured possession of the Dark Lord – his magic spell book."

"Who?"

"The Englishmen," the gargoyle replied in a low voice. "Thrust from a magic-less land of violence and secrecy, two rulers once lost to the world have returned to Englishmenland with a power greater than their realm has ever known. Who they are _we_ don't know: only the Englishmen know them. But what happened to them before they returned to their home is a mystery to all."

Dan paused to think about this. So the earth was sinking Gallowmere beneath the sea, and two men from a land known as Englishmenland had stolen Zarok's spell book and were wreaking havoc?

Sounded legit. Except for the land being called Englishmenland. He thought he'd read somewhere about an England, which sounded more correct.

So he was going to England.

But how? He was stranded on a hill in the middle of the ocean with no boat, no materials, no—

Wait. He looked around. There were plenty of potential boat materials here. He could make a raft of some kind. He could make a sail with some of the curtain around the place, and there was some driftwood outside... but he'd need a flat surface, or a sail and a mast were useless.

He wandered outside to look for something suitable when the ground began to shift. With no warning, the earth lifted beneath his feet, throwing him to the ground as a wooden casket thrust a mouldering corpse in his direction.


	5. Chapter 4

Chapter Four

Dan thrust his sword sideways in front of him and the cadaver landed on it with a growl. He slashed at the walking dead man, causing it to stagger backward into the water before lurching at him again. He swung a backslash, sending half a jaw flying, and scored deep marks in the man's chest. Life essence flew in all directions, as Dan was accustomed to. Zombies had no blood to spill.

He finally severed the head, releasing its pink-purple soul, and the body crumpled to the ground in two pieces. _Where was I? _Dan wondered. _Ah, yes, a boat. This will do! _He raised his attacker's coffin lid for inspection.

Ten minutes later, Dan finished a servable raft from the remains of the cadaver's home and floated it out to the water. It held well enough on the water, and Dan quickly fished it out before the wind could carry it out too far.

Next he had to find some weapons: something to throw, primarily. He retreated to the crypt and searched every inch of it as best he could in the gloom, but apparently the Heroes had swiped back their weapons immediately after Dan had died for the second time. _Nice of them, _he thought reproachfully.

He did find some daggers however, somehow thankfully avoiding a repeat of the blade-in-the-hand incident, and a copper shield was hanging on a wall also. He stashed them away on his person carefully, keeping his sword close to hand.

Once fully armed, he returned to the raft and boarded it, untying it from the hill as he went. A bright green glow startled him from his work and he noticed a life vial floating in the murky water. On closer inspection, a crossbow and two spears were floating alongside it.

So they hadn't taken their weapons back after all. Dan pondered on his other weapons as he paddled out on the raft. He found it unlikely that he had dropped _all _of his weapons on the way back from Zarok's domain, and the water couldn't have swept them out of the crypt. Someone must have stolen them and dropped them in the water, perhaps after drowning. _That will learn them, _he thought triumphantly.

He caught up with his items and gathered them up, removing his arm to reach out further as the boat was swept away a little. He drained the life vial immediately – the zombie had bitten him a couple of times – and added his weapons to his personal stash. Then he looked around him to navigate.

The Hilltop Mausoleum was north , if Dan's geography was correct. Using his arm as an oar, he made for the mausoleum to find anything else useful before a sound made him freeze.

A great horn sounded from the south. He turned and quickly paddled out of the way as a galleon lurched towards the mausoleum.

"Land ho!" called a man aboard the ship, pointing. He didn't notice Dan on his little coffin boat as he floated alongside the huge ship, and nobody else noticed him either as he grasped a cannon jutting from the side and pulled himself up.

The galleon raised its flag – a white standard with a red cross in the middle – and waited for any signs of life. Dan pulled himself into the deserted bilge deck and cowered in a corner as two gunners entered the hold.

"... completely sunk into the ocean, it did," one of the men was saying. "Pity, too, it was a nice old country for a holiday – had dragons and everything."

"Had that old cove Zarok too, that necromancer," the other said darkly. "D'you know, that was the cove that owned the book the king found, the one that he gave to the princes?"

"The one that turned little Richard into a goat, you mean?"

"That's the one!"

_Zarok's spell book, _Dan thought. _Has to be. No one else would have a spell about goats._

"You know what else is a nice place to visit?" the gunner said, all talk of Zarok's spell book forgotten, to Dan's disappointment. "The Hall of Heroes! Nice little place, built in honour of God's saints—"

_Never seen a saint save the kingdom, _Dan thought indignantly.

"... had a weird looking saint statue in there, skeleton man with one eye and half a skull. Looked like somebody et him. Ugly yolk, he must have been."

_Watch it, you, _he thought venomously at the man, fingering his sword.

"Tourist attraction? I thought it was a ghost house," his companion piped up.

"Was, yeah, but the prince shut off any contact between the Hall and the Heroes' Heaven, so they can't talk to anyone anymore."

Dan sat back to think about this. Shut off contact? Heroes' Heaven? That must mean that the Hall of Heroes has been locked.

The Heroes had spoken of this once, he remembered. The Hall of Heroes prevented the Heroes from returning from the dead if the likes of Zarok tried it on, but they could give council to living people via their statues in the physical Hall of Heroes. It was their heaven; it wasn't designed to be left, which was what attracted Dan in the first place.

However if the spectral Hall – the place where they all lived – was locked from the physical one, they couldn't interact with the living world _at all. _Which was no help to Dan's current predicament. Plus it meant he was locked out of the Hall of Heroes until he could disable Zarok's spells – which brought him to his next point.

If no one could be resurrected from the Hall of Heroes, what on earth was he doing here?

It occurred to him that someone must have gone to great lengths to bring him back to the living – but how? And more importantly, why?

"What the—" an alarmed voice interrupted his thoughts.

"Is that—?"

_Uh-oh, _Dan thought, and he scrambled out of his corner as half a dozen crew members tumbled into the bilge deck, armed with cutlasses. He drew his sword and was about to attack when suddenly one of the members leapt in front of him.

"Stop!" he exclaimed. "Don't you know who this is?"

The crew halted, nonplussed.

"This is a saint! From the Hall of Heroes!"

_Thank the Lord for dim-witted devoutness, _Dan thought gratefully.

The crew frowned in unison. "I've never seen him before," one of them said unanimously.

"He is! He's the bony one, the one with one eye! He must be... why, he must be the patron saint of ships!"

_Oh, no, _Dan groaned internally.

The crew members considered this and knelt before Dan, their cutlasses extended. He accepted one with a nod. He'd always wanted one of those.

"Oh saint, tell us your name!" the man intoned, on his knees directly in front of him. "Tell us what you require of us!"

Dan hesitated. "Er..." he trailed off. It occurred to him that he wasn't very good at talking without a jaw. In the Hall of Heroes, he seemed to talk normally without even trying, but in the living world, he sounded like he had a bucket on his head stuffed with unwashed handkerchiefs. _My... name's... Dan_, he said slowly. "Mngh... nngh... nGan..." he heard.

"Dan? His name is Dan!" the man exclaimed grandly.

"Nigh neen ma-idge noo nEngnlan..." he trailed off miserably with an "oof".

"Passage to England? Passage to England!" the man yelled. "M'lord shall have passage to England!" He ran up to the main deck, his fellow crew members in tow.

Dan sighed heavily and sat on a barrel as the crew ran about the ship like headless chickens. He hoped they wouldn't ask him anything else. Trying to talk made his head hurt.

He examined the bilge deck idly as the galleon swung around, and he wondered what his friends were doing as the ship wobbled south towards the country of England.


	6. Chapter 5

_Chapter Five_

"It's no good," Dirk said in disappointment. "Either nobody's there or the passage is locked."

"There's never nobody there!" Megwynne said despairingly. "In all the years I've been in the Hall of Heroes, not once have I not seen a wannabe hero beg for council! It must be locked!"

"NEIN!" Karl bellowed. "Zis is UNACCEPTABLE! Vot will Herr Fortesque do vizout a magic shield? He will be RUINED! He has NO CHANCE!"

"If you don't stop," Dirk said through clenched teeth, "goin' on about the magic shield, I'm gonna stick a magic sausage down your notably not-magic throat and see if your magic shield'll defend you from that as well as it did the first time!"

"Zat was NOT MY FAULT!" he objected hotly. "It voz the talk of the tea tray zat did that, ze TEA TRAY!"

"SHUT UP!" Megwynne shouted. "We have to think. How else can we get those supplies down to him?"

"Daniel will unlock the Hall by himself before long, I'm sure of it," Ravenhooves said calmly, the only hero with an ounce of control.

"I'm not sure he will," Megwynne said honestly. "This is magic too strong for even Zarok to attempt. It would take immense strength to hold the locks for long enough to take over, and by the time the enemy falters, it may be too late."

"We have to fight back," Ravenhooves said. "But how?"

* * *

The ship meandered up and down, its motion calming. Dan sat back and relaxed for the first time since being struck in the eye before a whisper made him jerk upright.

"Psst! Oi!"

His eye scanned the room's apparent emptiness. "Huh?"

"Psst! You!" The voice cackled and Dan heard the dim slosh of alcohol in a bottle. "You're Sir Daniel Fortesque, intcha? The Patron Saint of Ships!" The voice cackled some more.

Dan searched the deck before finally finding the voice's owner. An overly cheerful young man chuckled at him from the corner of the deck, behind a barrel with two bottles in it. His arm was bent at a peculiar angle. Dan peered into the barrel in front of the boy. It held nothing but two bottles full of rum and a great many empty ones. He glanced at the boy in disdain.

"What? It's medicinal!" he objected, draining his current bottle with ease. "Want a copy of the Shipmen's Times? You'll have to pick it up yourself, mindja, 'cause I seem to have mussed up me arm." He reached for the barrel and Dan snatched it away before he had the chance to grab.

"Who are you?"

"My name's Winston," he trilled in a high Cockney English voice, snapping a salute. "News paper boy extraordinaire. Want to know the ins and outs of the prince conspiracy? No problaymo, read all about it, that'll be two sovereigns, please!"

_Two sovereigns for a paper? What a rip—_Dan quickly decided this was unimportant and instead asked, "What prince?"

"The prince wot found the spells of Zarok, of course!" he chuckled, furtively shuffling towards the barrel of drink. "I'm told you're familiar with the cove, wot with bringing his house down and all! What's all this about you being alive again, anyhow? Thought you couldn't return from the Hall of Heroes? Or did you get kicked out again?" he asked with a laugh.

"Watch it, you!" he warned, drawing his sword.

"Alright, alright, only teasing!" he said shrilly, backing away from the barrel, but only slightly. "P'raps Lord Edward has a bone to pick with you, if you'll pardon the pun. I'm told he's looking for you."

"He is?" Dan asked uneasily.

"Course he is!" trilled the boy. "Why else d'you think this ship just passed by your house? They was heading for the Mausoleum, thinking you might be stocking up on supplies, and then the ship suddenly had the Bony Patron Saint of Ships from the Hall of Heroes and they turned straight back for home! Cor, the prince'll have the captain's guts for garters... but hold! The saint isn't just anyone from the Hall of Heroes! It's Sir Daniel Fortesque! Prince Edward'll be happy about that little coincidence, won't he?"

Dan gulped. He knew being a Patron Saint would have a catch.

"Still," Winston added, "least there's lots of booze around. Might as well drink up while you still can before Lord Edward tortures you. Get your equilibrium in ord—"

Dan slapped a hand over the boy's mouth as footsteps echoed on the stairs and they cowered behind the barrel as a man entered the bilge deck.

"Winston? Where's that witless powder monkey gone now? Winston!" he called. "If I catch wind of you drinking all the ship's booze again, I'll keel-haul you by your unspeakables while my cat o' nine tails finds its way up your..." His voice faded as he ascended to the main deck.

"Cor, that was close!" Winston breathed before Dan grasped his head firmly and turned it his way.

"What does this prince want with me?" he demanded.

Winston took a minute to refer to his internal English-Danspeak, Danspeak-English dictionary. "He's heard of your adventure the last time you was alive and figured you'd be back as soon as you caught wind of Zarok's magic returning. He figured instead of you coming back in your own time and wandering off, he'd bring you back himself so he'd know where you were. And he did: that's why he sent the ship out, because he'd set for you to come back when the ship arrived so it could grab you before you went around causing mischief. That's wot I heard the captain saying, anyway."

"So we can stop him before he starts his other spells?" He sighed and twirled his wrist impatiently as Winston translated mentally before answering, "No, he'll have started them now he knows you're in England."

"In—in England!" he squeaked in alarm. "But we've only been moving for ten minutes!"

"Ah, that's another thing," Winston replied. "Time don't exactly move like it used to. By my reckoning, we've been talking for about..." he counted on his fingers, "two months now."

"Two months?" he exclaimed.

"Yeah, I am rather scintillating company, aren't I?" he said proudly. "Fact, since we're on the subject of time, we should be making port right about—"

They felt the ship jerk to a halt.

"—now!" he finished cheerfully. "You'll want to have a look-about before we leave, see if we can't find anything useful while we still can. Maybe we can get ourselves a few drinks from this 'ere barrel—"

"Don't even think about it!" Dan warned.

"Oh, alright then, keep your hair—er, head on," he said with a giggle. "I'll just have some of this green gloop to wet me throat. Makes your mouth dry all this explaining the matters of the world—"

"No! Not all of it!" Dan snapped.

Winston tipped the life bottle over his open mouth and drank the lot. "Sorry, didn't catch that," he said with a burp. He glanced at his arm. "Ooh, me arm's stopped hurting. Tole you alcohol was medicinal." He threw the spent bottle behind him and Dan caught it with a yelp. "Come on! We best leave now, before they start to search for you."

Dan followed Winston to the cannon hole, which led out into a stretch of water shallow enough to walk through. He stared into the emptiness of the bottle mournfully and wished the bilge deck was as empty earlier as Winston led the way into the country known as England.


	7. Chapter 6

_Chapter Six_

The sky was purple, stroked through with green stripes. This was not unusual. Also the ground was nearly entirely consumed by the undead, who were surrounding Winston as he led Dan through the port as though it was full of small children instead of highly dangerous zombies with sharp teeth.

"You'll like it here this time of year," Winston said casually as Dan's sword did overtime. "Tourists are at an all-time low, the usual enemies of the English were retreating like injured dogs and there's plenty of dragons about these days. Breeding like flies now that the temperature has been supernaturally raised to uncomfortable."

Dan listened incredulously as his sword arm began to strain.

"You don't see that many ghosts around anymore," he mused. "They're all zombies this year. I'd rather come back as a ghost, meself. Get to walk through walls and everything, and your smelly feet just disappear. Oi!" he snapped as a zombie locked its jaws around his wrist. "This arm's just healed, you sod! Never mind, it's not too bad, I suppose. The cheek of those types, though. Totally unsociable..."

Dan zoned out completely and focussed on his attackers as the dirt road straightened out. Zarok's green sludge led to the end of the horizon and the two followed it as the zombie's numbers started to lessen.

"You know, I heard from a friend that the Shadow Demons are returning," Winston said conversationally as Dan bolted to attention. "The prince has hired them as bodyguards apparently, only they got more vicious nowadays and have started to eat each other. Leaves more food for the rest of us, is what I say. Speaking of which, I am starving. D'you fancy stopping for lunch? I hear London has some lovely—"

"Shut up. Where are the Shadow Demons?"

"The prince's castle," he said by way of explanation.

"Which is... where?" he asked drily.

"Forgot. Might remember after some lunch... and a drink," he added as an afterthought.

"Idiot," Dan muttered.

"Gesundheit. Ooh, look, there's a fine place for a meal! And they have a half price deal on!" he said excitedly, running off into a crowd as Dan followed hastily.

A sign gleamed from atop the stall Winston was hovering by, amidst hoards of green-skinned cadavers that Dan figured were probably not there for a half price meal at the Food Cauldron. _The Food Cauldron!_ the sign screamed at them. _Secret recipes from the Wiccans of the Orient! _There were even little imitation witches on broomsticks zipping from one end of the sign to the other. Dan rolled his eye. "Ridiculous."

"Yes, dead classy, eh?" Winston said cheerfully, misinterpreting Dan's mumble and giggling at his own pun. "Come on, let's see if we can't get ourselves a hero's discount!"

Dan sighed and fought their way into the Food Cauldron.

"Oi!" a screechy voice exclaimed in outrage. "What d'you think you're doing? Get that mess outta here! This is an eating establishment!"

Dan examined his surroundings sceptically. The place was a witches' hideout, all right – the usual cobwebs, spiders and assorted creepiness was in abundance. It sure didn't look like a restaurant, though. There were no tables, no chairs, no smells of food, no kitchen was apparent anywhere and the waitresses were huddled in a corner, muttering underneath their cowls.

"Business not going too well, eh?" Winston said sympathetically.

Dan backed out of the room slowly.

"Not as such, no," the screechy witch said slyly. "Lack of ingredients, you see. Hardly anything oriental in England, or tasty, come to that. Not like good old Gallowmere, bless her soul. I'd kill to have a good old Gallowmere delicacy, I would."

"Mmm, mmm," agreed the waitresses squeakily.

"Yeah, nuffin tastes of nuffin over here," Winston agreed with feeling.

"You know what tastes great here, though?" the witch asked Winston, eyeing Dan dubiously as he backed away more swiftly. "Sort of taboo ingredient, mind you."

"Oh, what's that, then?" he asked in interest.

She grinned. "Bones."

Dan gulped and ran for the door, which slammed shut in his face.

"What kind of bones?" Winston asked curiously, not getting the picture at all. "Sheep? Goat? Cow?"

"Human, actually." She lunged at the two.

Winston leaped out of the way as Dan brought his sword down on the witch's head. She split in two as the sword cut her down to the waist, and she grinned. "You'll have to do better than that, Sir Knight," she cackled. He recognised her immediately and pulled his sword away. The Witch of the Forest! _Looks like she's fallen on hard times since Gallowmere's flood,_ he thought. "That sword may have worked for the ants, Sir Fortesque, but you'll need something a bit more powerful for a witch!"

_And I thought you were subtle_, he thought.

The witch stood back, and her accomplices surrounded her, their hands linked. "You see, I don't just sit around brewing amber in my cauldron, Daniel," she sneered. "I need something with a bit more substance to go with it... a nice couple of skulls would suffice!" Her form began to shift.

Dan and Winston watched in horror as the witch transformed from a spindly old lady to a huge spider, her abdomen filling half the space inside the ersatz restaurant. "Let's see how your little sword can handle me now!" she snarled.

Winston cowered in a corner of the room as Dan launched himself at the arachnid, sword raised. Winston then noticed a flight of spiral stairs a yard away from him and he ascended at a sprint.

The minor witches had transformed into ants, to Dan's relief. Ants were easier to deal with. He hacked at them with his sword, sending bloody legs flying as the Witch of the Forest sent green acid droplets at Dan's head. One such droplet hit him square in the eye and he screamed deafeningly, stumbling away blindly.

Winston stumbled upstairs hastily, tripping a number of times on the flagstones and grasping the centre pillar for dear life. He thanked God for the fact spiral stairs were impossible to fall down and finally landed in the witches' bed quarters with an incredulous gasp.

Dan landed hard against the front door and slid to the floor as the ants descended on him. His eye was in agony, and everything was completely black. Only the scuttling of the ant witches' legs gave him any indication of their position – that and the blasted green acid emitting from the Forest Witch.

"What's the matter, Dan?" she asked patronisingly. "Can't you see me?" She chuckled piercingly.

Suddenly her chuckles turned to screams.

Dan cursed his missing eye for the second time as the witches screamed, first as insects then as women as they reverted back to their original forms in agony. Thuds sounded and the faint siren of souls escaping alerted Dan of their deaths as he sat miserably in total visual oblivion, aware of nothing except for the heat of a fire...

A fire!

Then an irritatingly familiar voice emerged from the chaos, confirming his thoughts.

"Dan! I found this upstairs, along with a stove for their cauldron!" A bottle was pressed between his front teeth and warm liquid flowed through his bones. The pain in his eye lessened to a dull roar, then faded out completely as vision returned.

"I used the stove to light this! I should have known witches couldn't handle fire!" He held up a flaming club before blowing it out.

Dan looked around. The witches had disappeared; they had died from the flames that now filled the fake restaurant, billowing up to the ceiling. There was one other thing that was visible in the room, and it hovered in midair, surrounded but not obscured by the flames.

Dan smiled internally as the Chalice gleamed with the lost souls of England.


End file.
